Ludens
by Mutinous
Summary: Link urges Zelda to consider a future for Hyrule without the use of Guardian technology.


**AN:** I kept the title as inspiration from the song (sadly, no Kojima here)! Forgive me if my research isn't up to snuff, I haven't played this game in a while.

* * *

_The city was on fire and nobody could see the way out.  
_  
_Hulking metal claws snapped onto the rooftops, hauling their bodies up to tower over the streets. Their electric blue eyes scanned the roads, honing in on any sign of movement before they fired upon families and animals alike. Generations were burned away in a single afternoon, perishing under the watch of four beasts that could not move to save them._

_Some missing component rendered them incapable of reason, a gap in their technology sold as a safety measure. The calamity spread inside like a disease, crippling them until their programming was reduced to nothing more than a voice chanting 'power!' A hunger was etched into their code. And now, all they knew was destruction._

_A child closed her eyes as an inferno tore through the house._

* * *

The sun never quite hit Hateno at full force in the mornings. The full brunt of the rays were always stifled by the cliffs, dotted by blue fire, overlooking the ocean from their highest point. It was not until some time later that the shroud of dawn lifted and the village thrived exactly as it did 100 years ago, curtained in the crisp air of the mountains. Guardian husks sat at the foot of the hill, visible from the vast fields of rice.

The Cucco crowed and Link sat upright. Drenched in sweat, his hair hanging in clusters around his shoulders, he brought his arm over his face and shielded his eyes from the light. A sharp pain coursed into his stomach and at once, he felt nauseous.

He turned away, praying for the feeling to pass as his eyes adjusted to the morning. They settled onto the table where he noticed that the Sheikah slate was on. The light bore back at him, projecting unnatural blue against the side of his arm. A new image sat on the screen.

The scent reached him before he realised that it was right there on his bedside table. A baked apple, cut into slices smeared with butter. Steam rose from the plate into the sunlight, wafting around the vase of dead flowers.

"Finally, you're awake." Link followed the voice to the top of the stairs where Zelda waited. Her eyes narrowed into a smile, though her lips remained still. "I've imparted another memory into your Sheikah slate. Your first home-made breakfast after sealing away the calamity."

He ate the apple in silence, letting the sweetness burn in his mouth.

"It seems your injuries will require more time," she broached. "If they choose to be stubborn, perhaps a visit to the shrine of resurrection would be in order?"

A brief pause followed before he traded the empty plate for his Sheikah slate. He looked upon it for a moment, his memory calling him to the fragments it had saved. But then his mouth hardened into a thin line. He turned it off and placed it face down onto the table, wincing as his arm slumped back into his lap. "I never want to set foot in that place again."

"... Understandable." Zelda frowned.

"Or any place like it."

She gave a quiet sigh as she walked closer, stopping just short of his side. He did not move as he watched her. His fingers were clutched at the bandages around his midsection.

"I heard your voice from outside," Zelda exhaled. "Shouting. I intended to wait for you, but after that you left me with no choice but to come inside. You've no idea what a relief it was to find you in one piece."

Link met her gaze directly. But the peace he felt was short-lived. His eyes flickered, unable to hold still as they searched her own with all the warmth of Mount Lanayru. His heart rate spiked beneath the surface, shooting adrenaline all the way down into his fingertips.

Those eyes of hers. They called out to him and he had fallen for them, reaching for her hand as it frailed away beneath a tide of wires and cables. He let himself be swallowed by the floor of Hyrule Castle where the stench of burning metal filled his lungs. It was an atmosphere that choked all life out of existence, where the flowers that once bloomed would never grow back.

Nausea took hold of him again and he swallowed in an effort to suppress the memory.

"Why did you come?"

Zelda looked to the floor, unable to hide her guilt. "I might require your assistance with another issue."

"... That works out," he admitted. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you." He winced a second time as he sat upright, fighting to steady his voice. He hoped it could wait longer but by some misfortune the Goddesses had brought her here, today. "Zelda, how do you plan on restoring the country? What are we going to do with the remnants of those... _things?"_

"You expect me to come up with a cohesive answer after a matter of days?"

He shrugged. "You expect me to get out of bed and keep fighting for you."

Zelda took a seat at the end of the bed, commanding his full attention. "Would you be satisfied with a number of half-formed thoughts on the matter? I suppose it will have to do, for that is all I can give." She drew a deep breath.

"The Guardians are still very much a liability. We do not know the extent to which their circuitry was damaged by the calamity when it took over, or really whether they were damaged at all. Only a few active specimens remain and Robbie has been investigating them thoroughly to find the cause of error. Lasers disabled, of course."

"And what does he plan to do with them?" Link frowned.

"Purah advocated for putting the technology into a new prototype. Not unlike Cherry, who I believe you met at the Akkala research lab. These ones will be geared towards the restoration effort. Clearing away the destruction, rebuilding lost territories. That sort of work."

Link's eyes darkened immediately. He reached out to grab Zelda by the arm, his grasp as callous as his voice. "No."

She wrestled herself away from his touch, her eyes betraying a flicker of fear. Never before had he looked so sleepless. So fractured. She settled back down and scrunched the blanket in her hands. He trembled in opposition, though he did not try to suppress it. Her sadness awoke some familiarity buried deep within him.

"Tell Robbie to deactivate them all. Immediately. Command him to do it! You're the one with the power!"

"Then we will learn nothing!" she argued. "Link, we need to understand what happened so that we can prevent such a thing from ever happening again."

_"It won't happen again if we destroy them!"_

The memories flooded his mind in a torrent, playing in the same terrible loop that robbed him of sleep.

Graves that would never be built were whispering to him, aching to be raised from the ashes of Hyrule Castle Town. He watched as mosses grew fast into the divots of every Guardian he felled at Fort Hateno. Lizards were scurrying from his shadow, seeking shelter in the husks of the Torin Wetlands. And Zelda was there, the glimpse of a smile on her face as she watched scientists at work in the castle courtyards. The skies darkened, bleeding red before a ticking drowned the song of the birds outside.

Link began to notice a tightness nipping at his body. His hand. She was squeezing onto it.

"You know I cannot do that! You are asking me to keep all of Hyrule in the dark for the sake of your own comfort!" she snapped. "Mistakes were made and I will get to the bottom of them. I owe it to everyone I failed."

The sharpness in his eyes dwindled. He faced her again, now calm and pleading in his reservation. "Why build more?"

"Why discard a past that we may very well learn from?"

He thought of it as his fingers curled around her own, sweat gathering in his palms. The picture of the Champions haunted him from his desk.

"If it should bother you so much, we will introduce you to the first prototype," she offered. "It will be entirely safe. Please, you must have some faith in Robbie and Purah. Did they not assist you when you called upon them?"

His teeth clenched as he snatched his hand away. After that, he threw the blankets off, rolling the ends of his trousers up as far as they would go. "You call this safe?"

Ugly scars ran down his thighs and shins, cut from lasers that had clipped past his legs and exploded onto the nearest surface. The flames had ravaged him. He recalled the very moment they knocked him down from his foothold against Hyrule Castle, crushing his ribs in the fall. Zelda gasped as he moved again to lift his sleeves, his arms marred by lacerations from Guardian scouts and monsters alike.

"You want to trust something that's already failed us?" he snapped, voice trembling. "That we still don't understand? What happens when we get burned again?"

"Enough!" Zelda razed.

Her voice shot through the quiet of the morning and bounced off the walls.

"Tell me what happens, Link, when we turn our backs on the Sheikah again! Did you not encounter enough of the Yiga clan on your journey? If I were to reject them now, it would destabilise our country even further! I refuse to let that happen."

He thought of Cottla and Koko from Kakariko Village. Motherless, at a far younger age than he was. But soon his mind drifted to Nebb, the child who played chase in the fields of Hateno. The child whose family collected weapons in the Age of Burning Fields, whose father had eyed the Hateno Laboratory with hesitation before he called it a "strange place."

"Think of the potential," Zelda urged, adopting a softer tone. Link looked away from the window to meet her eyes. "We could see Hyrule rebuilt in our lifetime. Such a feat would have been impossible in the past."

"... But those _things _are still out there. Hunting us."

"Yes. They are."

The Princess sighed, conceding her position before she reached for his hand once more. He did not bat her away. "I came to seek your assistance because their behaviour defies our understanding of them. By all rights, the Guardians should be completely harmless now! But they are not. We believe that the corruption must still be present in Hyrule."

Link chewed the bottom of his lip as he tried to envision the face of such a threat. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, mimicking the surges of power he felt beneath Hyrule Castle. A thousand blue eyes dotted the walls, piercing through the dark as they honed in on him at once. The ticking was back, growing faster with every breath.

"If we could find the source of this poison and obliterate it, there would be nothing more to fear. _They _wouldn't be any more dangerous than the fire you keep in your lanterns."

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, letting the sounds of the morning take back the day. The scent of apples lingered in the house. Upon noticing it, he felt her hand again, squeezing tighter than ever before. "I'll help you find it."

Her eyes widened as she failed to rein in her smile, one that transformed the rest of her face.

"But we need to find another way forward." Link's voice was sharp again, uncompromising. "There are people here, waiting to build Hyrule with their own hands."

"Perhaps." Her smile vanished. "... But without our advancements in technology, you would not be here to fight me on the matter. Your memories may have been lost forever. There is good and bad in such power. And perhaps, the answer lies in loyalty. If we could develop the machines into sentience, they would be as prone to corruption as you or I. Such life forms were said to exist at the beginning of time."

'Then may they guide us to the end,' he thought in silence.

Zelda and Link met again the following autumn. They took the winding path up to the Hateno Laboratory. He refused to look upon the other contraptions as Purah installed a new application onto the Sheikah slate, claiming that it would seek the corruption on their behalf. He held his breath as they stepped outside, staring at the device, waiting for that familiar sound to awaken. It was silent for as long as they were in the village.

He broke away from the screen to glance at Zelda as they journeyed through the woods, following the rising signal towards Hyrule Castle. He watched as the campfire burned long into the night. Then as the sun came up, he greeted her with a honeyed baked apple, one cut far more crudely than the one she had enshrined in his memories. She ate it in silence, thinking only of her father.

Twilight washed over the sky as they crossed Hyrule Field. The Sheikah slate had begun to flash with dark lines, its beeping growing quicker and more erratic with every step. By the time they reached the ruined citadel the screen was nearly drowned in static. Though, the noise was beating steady. Alive. Insistent.

Link rubbed his eyes, blinking hard in the night as he called Zelda's attention to the field of ash. There, he saw a boy clad in green, wandering in a grid of streets he could not remember. When the Princess urged him to look again, he noticed with mild discomfort that it was merely an orb of light, not unlike the luminous stones. They followed the green light across the bones of the city. Then, upon reaching the castle gates, they took the gallows down.

The Sheikah slate went black.


End file.
